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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22457092">if you let me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/pseuds/lavenderlotion'>lavenderlotion</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anger, Angst, Apologies, Canon Disabled Character, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post X-Men: First Class</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:35:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,241</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22457092</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/pseuds/lavenderlotion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“What are you doing here, Erik?” he asked, speaking the words aloud as to not be tempted by the warm familiarity of Erik’s thoughts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>124</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>if you let me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>thank you to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/librata/pseuds/librata">Librata</a> for all the word help!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Charles let his eyes fall closed as he took a deep breath, doing his best to ignore the numbness radiating throughout his lower body. Even after weeks of physio—endless days spent within the hospital until he could no longer handle the overwhelming sense of pain and despair emanating from the countless minds within the white walls—the numbness was still what bothered him the most. It was an impossible block in his path that he could not even hope to see over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps that was because the numbness wasn't just through his legs. Perhaps, the reason Charles was having such a horribly hard time, was because when Charles truly let himself think of it, the numbness was </span>
  <em>
    <span>everywhere,</span>
  </em>
  <span> it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and no matter what he did it felt like he would never be able to feel a single thing ever again. For ever since Erik had dug a coin through Shaw's head there had been an emptiness that echoed through his thoughts that he could never get away from.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was overwhelming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sighing, Charles raised himself with his elbows and flexed his core, shifting on his bed and trying his damnedest to get comfortable. He'd had to switch mattresses following his return from the hospital, not able to sleep in the one he had as it was not good to sink too deeply into a mattress with the state of his body. He was still learning to sleep on his back after a lifetime of preferring to sleep on his side, though that wasn't nearly as challenging as it had been to learn to sleep alone again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn't matter that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>didn't </span>
  </em>
  <span>want Erik in his bed. His body and his mind craved him in equal measure, each and every night. During moments of weakness, Charles allowed himself to admit that he missed Erik with every fibre that made up his being every second of the day, no matter how weak that made him feel. He loved him. Erik had hurt him so terribly and still, Charles loved him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were nights, like this very night was turning out to be, where Charles laid in bed for hours unable to sleep as he tried his very best not to think of any of the things he’d lost. The loss of his sister ached so very deeply and on the nights he was forced awake by despair, he often wondered if they had been any way he could have made her stay. He doubted it, for he truly did know her mind and knew that they were rather different in their principles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Erik, on the other hand, well...he could have kept Erik. Charles replayed what had happened on that wretched beach more times than what was probably sane and each time he tried to see things from another angle, analyze it from another perspective, wonder what else he could have done. As greatly as it pained him to admit it, Charles was nearly certain his blundering habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time was what had led to Erik leaving him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charles certainly understood what it was like to be at the hands of men who were following orders. That night in the sea he had been so desperate, shocked by the ice-cold of the water and barely able to hold his breath for a moment longer, that he had delved far, </span>
  <em>
    <span>far</span>
  </em>
  <span> deeper into Erik’s mind than he had ever intended. In those few endless moments, his mind had melded with Erik’s so entirely that Charles hadn’t been able to tell where Erik began and Charles ended. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he’d known as he was saying the words that they were the wrong thing to say, that they were bound to drive Erik further away from him, but he hadn’t quite been able to stop himself. He felt incredibly foolish for it, but he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that it had been those words that had driven Erik away from him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he did believe, to an extent, that some men </span>
  <em>
    <span>were</span>
  </em>
  <span> innocent of the crimes their superiors committed, and he knew that at times the only way to survive was to follow orders. Such things weren’t nearly as simple a matter as Erik tended to see the world, and that was what made them so different. That was why Charles had said what he did on that beach; in part, it</span>
  <em>
    <span> had</span>
  </em>
  <span> been the truth, just one Erik could not accept for so many understandable reasons.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were very different men at their core, he and Erik. Charles had thought that they loved each other enough for that not to matter, but over the recent weeks, it has been hard to believe that Erik loved him at all. He had left, him and Raven both, during a time when Charles needed them more than he ever could have imagined. During a time where he had to learn what it was like to </span>
  <em>
    <span>live,</span>
  </em>
  <span> all over again, as everything he’d known had changed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Given, they hadn’t known the true extent of the damage caused—none of them had, not until they finally, </span>
  <em>
    <span>finally </span>
  </em>
  <span>managed to get Charles to a hospital—and so he tried not to blame them. Unfortunately, that did nothing to dull the pain that came from being abandoned during his weakest moment, and no matter how charitable Charles found himself feeling, he could never bring himself to completely forgive Erik for his abandonment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Goodness, Charles was never going to sleep at this rate. He considered getting up, perhaps making himself a cuppa and heading down to the library, but he could hardly find the energy in himself to move when he was already so tired both physically </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> emotionally. Moving took so much more effort and thought than it ever had before, and Charles wasn’t sure if he had it in him that night. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No. All he wanted was to rest without any demons and it looked like that wouldn’t be happening. With another, heavier sigh, he cast his eyes to the side. His chair, one Hank had found for him and then looked over to ensure it was in good working order, was sitting there in plain sight. It a sight he hated, however. A sight that always felt mocking whenever his gaze caught it. It reminded him of all the things he could no longer do and all the places he could no longer go, for he found more and more how little of the world was accessible. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charles scoffed in disgust as he looked away. It was so very hard to be positive when all he could feel was the oppressing darkness that came with night. For a while, this old house had felt like a home, filled with what was becoming his family, but now it felt empty even with those that had stayed. Erik was gone, and so was Raven, and what he had left was a group of boys Charles had broken by bringing them into a war they’d deserved no part in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, clearly Charles would not be sleeping tonight after all. He cast a thought out to see if the other three were sleeping as well—Charles needed more help than he would ever admit to, but he truly did not feel as though he had the energy to leave his bed—and instead, he felt something he never thought he would feel again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, it couldn’t—</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Charles,</span>
  </em>
  <span> the thought was projected so clearly that it was impossible to miss. Charles gasped as his heart began to race, though he didn’t bother getting up from his bed. Erik’s projection had drawn him in and before he could even think of holding himself back, he was slipping into the other man’s thoughts.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh,</span>
  </em>
  <span> how lovely it was to be back within Erik’s mind. Things had changed over the last handful of months and there was a freshness to the grief that coated Erik’s mind. They had lost someone, a mutant that Charles hadn’t known, though that seemed to be what has brought Erik back to him. As Charles slipped through Erik’s mind and gently sailed through his thoughts, he wasn’t able to miss the pain that Erik was in and how that pain had drawn him back to Charles.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was nearly too much after so long apart. All Charles could remember was the silence he had heard at the beach, an ugly, unending block that had kept him from Erik’s mind. It still hurt to think of, as he was now, for he never wanted to remember that wretched day again. Now he was allowed freely into Erik’s mind, and it still hurt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It still hurt so very much. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charles felt like a newborn foal as he stumbled through Erik’s mind. The shock of him being here was nearly too much for him, and he knew he was being clumsy as he dug through Erik’s thoughts to see what the last few months had been like for him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Brotherhood </span>
  </em>
  <span>was apparently what they called themselves, a horrific name if Charles were to be asked, and they had been growing in numbers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He learned of Erik’s new companions by going through his thoughts with little grace and a strong hunger to know more. Charles had always been incredibly curious and Erik had always been endlessly fascinating to him and this was no different. He was clearly being clumsier than he could have even imagined, for Erik answered a question Charles hadn’t even known the other man could feel him projecting. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I am back because you are the only person who I have ever felt safe with,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Erik pressed into his mind. He was so entrenched in Erik’s thoughts that they echoed loudly enough to be disorientating. He felt himself jolt where he was still laid out on his bed from the force of Erik’s words, taking a gasping breath as he saw the window to his bedroom open through eyes that were not his own. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charles felt the pull of Erik’s mutation as if the awareness of metal came from within his own body. Erik lifted himself through the air using the metal plating along the soles of his shoes and a metal bracelet on each wrist to steady him. Charles felt every bit of metal through the mansion as Erik expanded his awareness outward. He felt Erik’s confusion when he identified the shape next to Charles’ bed, and then a growing sense of worry that Charles had to remove himself from. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Erik floated through his window and touched down without a single sound, Charles was back in his own mind. No matter how much he told himself he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to fully pull away from Erik’s thoughts. The other man’s mind was still there, his thoughts still echoing through the room, but Charles was once again his own person, consciousness fully within his own being. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He watched Erik’s face from his place on the bed, pushing himself onto his elbows and feeling incredibly vulnerable despite the power he wielded with nothing more than a simple thought. Without his wretched helmet on, Erik could do nothing to hurt him if Charles didn’t allow it. Erik’s eyes travelled over his form and Charles felt his arousal-laced-appreciation like it was his own. His cheeks heated at the feeling, torn between flattery and anger in a strange mix that left him nauseous. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Slowly, Erik’s eyes moved to the metal he had already identified. Charles felt his denial snap at the sight of the chair, and he also felt Erik’s mounting sorrow. He didn’t want to feel anything like that from a man who had hurt him so deeply, so he pulled himself further from Erik’s mind and mustered up the strictest face he could possibly pull in light of how his heart felt it was being torn apart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you doing here, Erik?” he asked, speaking the words aloud as to not be tempted by the warm familiarity of Erik’s thoughts. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Erik said nothing for several long minutes. The silenced stretched between them awkwardly as Charles stared at Erik who stared at the chair, and the last few months weighed very heavily between them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answers?” Erik asked him distractedly, but his eyes had not yet left the chair. “You’re not going to get up and greet me, old friend?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charles’ laugh was incredibly bitter. It burned up his throat as he let it out, and that burning seemed to travel to his eyes as he suddenly found himself holding tears at bay. “And you ask </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span> about such asinine questions?” Erik began shaking his head but Charles was not finished, and his words were laced with venom as he spoke. “What the hell do you think you’re doing in my home, Erik?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...” Erik trailed off into nothing, his eyes finally returning to Charles’ prone form. Charles pulled his torso up using the strength of his arms, situating himself against his pillows under the heavy weight of Erik’s gaze. He felt overwhelmingly vulnerable—not for the way he was without a shirt or the skin that was exposed to Erik’s gaze, but by the way Erik was watching him move with far greater difficulty than it should ever take to perform such a simple task as sitting up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am still waiting for an answer, Erik,” Charles said shortly, keeping his arms at his sides as to not cross them over his chest. He knew that would make him look bothered—he </span>
  <em>
    <span>was,</span>
  </em>
  <span> of course, but he was doing his damnedest to maintain his composure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Erik regarded him for another moment before he finally spoke, his words quiet and small in the large room. “I’ve missed you,” Erik admitted to him, the words sounding like they pained him to say even after what he had thought earlier. Charles figured it was because Erik had </span>
  <em>
    <span>always</span>
  </em>
  <span> had a particular trouble with articulating his feelings, if he ever expressed them in the first place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I am sure that you have,” Charles bit out angrily, not censoring his words or his tone from his wrath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Charles, please,” Erik said quietly, “I did not come for a fight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then what have you come for?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve told you, Charles. I’ve missed you. Please, I don’t want to argue.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No? Then Erik, </span>
  <em>
    <span>why are you here? </span>
  </em>
  <span>I can’t believe it’s only because you’ve missed me because Erik, I can tell you that I have missed you as well. Each day, each hour, each </span>
  <em>
    <span>minute</span>
  </em>
  <span> that has passed since you abandoned me on that beach, broken and bloodied at your own hand, I have missed you. And it has hurt more and more with each beat of my heart and you now dare to enter my home and call me your </span>
  <em>
    <span>friend?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Charles was crying by the time he finished speaking, his angry yell dissolving into a wordless scream of pure rage that was threaded through with grief and sorrow and betrayal. He did not know when the tears began only that they would not stop. He glared as angrily as he could at Erik through blurred vision as he desperately sucked in heaving breaths that he exhausted with each heaving cry. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Erik slowly crossed the room. Charles considered what it would feel like to step into his mind and hurt him just as badly as he’d been hurt, to show Erik just what it had felt to have a coin dragged through his brain matter, but...even as he thought it he flinched back in self-horror. Erik had been hurt so, so much by so, so many people that Charles knew he could never be one to add to that, no matter how much Erik had hurt him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Charles, please, come here,” Erik whispered, gently leading him forward until Charles’ face was tucked against his neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had no idea when Erik had sat on the bed right next to Charles’ hip but he was suddenly right there, one hand of cool, firm fingers pressing against his side and drawing him. He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself down but the familiar scent of Erik’s cologne and his sweat completely broke him, and he spiralled into another very tight series of sobbing cries that made his chest physically ache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You </span>
  <em>
    <span>broke</span>
  </em>
  <span> me,” he sobbed, raising a fist and slamming it against Erik’s chest as hard as he could. Erik did nothing to stop him and rather held him tighter, running a hand that Charles knew so well up and down his back. It brought him a measure of comfort but Charles was too hysterical to calm. He kept his hands at his sides as hugging back felt like too much of a weakness no matter how badly he craved Erik’s touch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am so sorry,” Erik whispered into his hair. His voice brought Charles to another fit of tears. He had long given up on ever hearing Erik whisper something into his ear again and this, this ineffective, hollow apology, was the last thing he would have ever wished to hear in such a tone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hate you, you stupid, bloody idiot of a man,” Charles muttered weakly, taking a few more gasping breaths while he cried, feeling as though he would never be able to stop. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Erik continued to hold him and he hated himself for how comforting it was. Here was the man who had hurt him beyond </span>
  <em>
    <span>anyone </span>
  </em>
  <span>else, beyond his mother, or Cain, or Kurt, all because Charles had </span>
  <em>
    <span>allowed</span>
  </em>
  <span> it. He had let Erik into his heart and had convinced himself that it would be okay, that Erik loved him, even if he was rubbish at showing it. Charles felt a fool for how things had turned out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charles bit into his bottom lip so hard it hurt to hold the words back. Erik continued to hold him and whisper mutterings of comfort at him as he rubbed his back. Charles tuned him out and focused on how he could feel his heart beating in his ears. He forced himself to start calming down, a practice he hadn’t used since childhood when he hadn’t been able to cry else the beatings worsen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, Charles found the strength to pull himself back. He didn’t push Erik away like he so badly wanted, didn’t reach over for a pillow and smack him upside the head. Didn’t even press into his mind and hurt him. He couldn’t. For all the anger that Charles felt raging through his chest, he couldn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever </span>
  </em>
  <span>bring himself to hurt Erik, not when he still loved him so painfully. Rather, he looked at him with his cheeks still wet with his tears, and waited. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had made enough first moves between them to never want to make another.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My friend, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Charles, </span>
  </em>
  <span>I never wanted to hurt you like this,” Erik pleaded with him, his head ducked and his eyes wide and his expression sincere. Charles wanted to throttle him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then why did you?” Charles asked him simply, though he knew it was not nearly such a simple answer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was an accident, please, you have to believe me,” Erik told him readily, words falling quickly from his lips but sounding no less true for the urgency they were spoken with. Charles knew what he meant without even having to look into his thoughts, and bile rose in his throat at the man’s idiocy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I believe you hadn’t meant to cripple me,” Charles told him plainly, not reacting as he saw Erik flinch away, “but Erik, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>left me.</span>
  </em>
  <span> You left me alone on that beach, placed me in Moira’s arms, and you left me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Charles—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There is nothing to say, Erik. We have each made our choices. You chose to leave me, to believe that your ideals had to keep us apart. I did not. I didn’t, </span>
  <em>
    <span>wouldn’t,</span>
  </em>
  <span> make that choice. Not when there are nights when I cannot sleep for how painfully I love you. Not when I wonder of my own sanity, when I wonder at my own </span>
  <em>
    <span>worth,</span>
  </em>
  <span> all because you do not love me back.” Charles’ voice faded in volume as he spoke until it was nothing but a dull whisper that captured exactly how exhausted he was of feeling the way he did. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do, Charles, I swear I do,” Erik pleaded to him once more. There were tears gathered in his eyes that did not do as much to lull Charles’ anger as he would have thought. Perhaps it was due to the many tears of his own that he had shed in the past months. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No matter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t believe you,” Charles told him with a weak shrug of his shoulders and a weaker voice, “and I know I could look inside your mind and see whether or not that's the truth but I...Erik, I don’t want to have to do that. I should believe that someone loves me without having to invade their thoughts.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Erik let a tear fall, and then several more as he bowed his head. He said nothing for a moment and when he looked up his face was masked in a level of determination Charles hadn’t seen since that very first night in the ocean when Erik had been willing to drown if it meant hanging onto Shaw for another moment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he reached out, Charles allowed Erik to take his hand in his and fold it in his fingers. “I love you, Charles Xavier, and I will do everything in my power, until I take my dying breath, to show you that is a truth I feel in every fibre of my being</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you pull out a ring, Erik Lehnsherr, I will have you live out those days thinking you are a house cat,” Charles told him bluntly, but his voice was far lighter than it had been only a moment before. The joke, it seemed, began to chip away some of the tension between them, and Erik smiled at him uncertainly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll save it, then,” Erik told him, and by the look in his eyes alone, Charles knew it to be the truth. Charles was tempted to reassure himself through a brief glance at Erik’s thoughts but held himself back for he believed that even after months apart that had changed them both into decidedly different men—he could still read Erik’s face as well as he once had. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In a moment of weakness or strength—Charles was not sure which to classify the soft aching of his heart as—he squeezed Erik’s hand back. “You may bath, and change, and you may take the couch. Be here in the morning, and begin helping me get this damn school together, and maybe one day, in a few </span>
  <em>
    <span>years,</span>
  </em>
  <span> we can talk about that ring.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Charles, there is nothing more that would make me happier,” Erik swore, and he leaned down to press a lingering kiss to Charles’ knuckles in a way that made him feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>entirely</span>
  </em>
  <span> too breathless knowing those very lips had once been against his asshole. Goodness, but what was he, a schoolboy?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gently, and with a rising hope in his chest that made him feel sick to his stomach and unendingly optimistic all at once, he let his mind brush ever so gently against Erik’s own. Erik’s entire face transformed, and his smile was absolutely breathtaking for how filled with joy it was. He had always been such a gorgeous man and lord, was his beauty evident now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charles had no idea if he was setting himself up for another heartbreak. He still felt partially numb after all he had expressed that night, but it wasn’t anything like the echoing emptiness he had felt the last several weeks alone. He could still see the patch of wetness he had left behind on Erik’s shirt and wondered if it held his sorrow for how light he suddenly felt. Erik was still nodding his head even if he hadn’t moved, and Charles allowed the man to stare at him for another moment before he shooed him away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go now. You know where my bathroom is and where I keep my supplies. You’ll need to move the chair,” Erik’s mind spiked with another wave of horror that Charles ignored as he continued on with, “but please leave it in the tub. You can take a pair of my pyjamas if you would like, and then a blanket from the cupboard next to the fire.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know the one,” Erik confirmed, and then he kissed Charles’ knuckles again before saying, “thank you so very much for this, Charles.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could tell there was more that Erik wanted to say, but thankfully he cut himself off. Charles nodded at him and watched Erik fetch some clothing before walking to the door to the bathroom, where he turned and looked back at him. They watched each for a moment before Erik nodded at him, and Charles finally allowed himself to fall back against his pillow. His heart was racing and his mind was whirling and he knew, without a doubt, that he wouldn’t be sleeping a wink that night. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>However, knowing that Erik would only be around the corner, that didn’t seem like such a poor prospect. Not anymore. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>come say hi to me on <a href="https://lavender-lotion.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>!<br/>comments and kudos are much appreciated!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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